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Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Introduction to My Version of Freezer Cooking

ETA:If you enjoy these tips and are looking for some great and easy freezer meal recipes, please check out my e-Book, “Make Ahead Meals: Freezer Meal Recipes that Make Dinner Quick and Easy”. The book is both a step by step guide to getting started with freezer meals and a cookbook. The book contains over 50 recipes and printables for inventory tracking, labels, and grocery lists. All of the recipes use whole foods and each recipe lists the calorie content per serving (most are less than 500 calories per serving). This book will show you the best way to make and cook healthy and cost efficient freezer meals from start to finish! For more information please CLICK HERE, the book can be purchased either as an e-Book or hardcopy.To purchase a PDF file of this e-Book (for $7.99) directly from myself please click the PayPal button below

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Hi everyone! I'm here to start off an introductory post to one of the new topics I will be covering in the blog this year :) One of my most recent favorite topics- freezer cooking! I am LOVING it so far, it takes a little planning but is so worth it. This is a very long post so be forewarned :)

If you don't know what freezer meals are I'll give you a quick definition- although I am by no means an expert. For me, freezer meals are two fold. One way I do it is Crockpot Freezer Meals which is just chopping and mix raw meat and veggies in a bag and then the whole thing can be thrown in the crockpot and cook all day while I'm at work. Very easy but there are a lot of crappy crockpot freezer meal recipes floating around. The other way I do it is by cooking huge batches of things like lasanga, meatballs, meatloaf, chili, and other meals and freezing down dinner size portions. Almost anything can be frozen! And I've found that making triple or quadruple the recipe is hardly any more work and not much more money than just making it once. Ahhh efficiency!

I label everything with directions for cooking and then I can thaw my meal the night before and leave instructions for my nanny for getting cooking started (usually it just involves throwing it in the crockpot at a certain time), when I get home I put the finishing touches on the meal. Easy peasy.

Here's a view of my stocked freezer. When our refrigerator broke a few months ago I had to take out a line of credit to buy a new one and I happened to have enough left after the new fridge for a little freezer, which has been fantastic. It saves us a lot of time and money.

The door:

You'll see the second shelf is a little messy right now! Oops! I have the freezer broken up this way:

Mixed in with whatever shelf has the most room I usually store miscellaneous items like twice baked potatoes.

So that's a quick tour of my freezer. I also have a little pantry cupboard right next to my freezer in the basement to store pantry items that go along with any of the meals. I try to buy everything I will need for each meal up front and store it away until it's time to make it, that way I'll always have what I need on hand for last minute meal decisions.

Most of my meals are stored in either gallon size Ziploc Freezer Bags, GLAD Ovensafe bakeware (highly reccomend this! Just make sure you put it on a sheet pan in the oven. But they're reusable as well!), and tupperware. I store all of this stuff together in my little freezer area of the basement.
These are the storage containers that I recommend for making these recipes. The OvenWare trays and Ball Freezer Jars are all reusable and the bags are heavy duty and freezer proof.

So now on to the meals themselves. How do I find my recipes? I use Pinterest a lot but have had hit or miss luck with some of the recipes (in particular the crockpot freezer meals). This is my Pinterest Freezer Meal Board. I went to a bunch of sites and compiled a list of my dream freezer inventory and then got started cooking. One of the best sites I found was this one.

Here is what my Freezer Inventory looks like today (yes I keep a detailed inventory! Must be the Quality Control Scientist in me :P). I keep track of what I put in, how much, the date, and whenever I remove something I list how many removed/remaining. I also have a column for "Out of Stock" so whenever something is gone I can remember to make some more. I keep a pen right next to the inventory so it's easy to remember to log things in or out.

So how do I have time to make all of these meals? or the money? Well, if I have a week where we don't need to buy a lot of food (like Charlie food or lunch food) I will put some money aside to make freezer meals. Honestly, they're typically not very expensive to make....mostly it's buying the protein, and everything else is usually on hand aside from veggies or cheese. I pick what meal I make based on what protein is on sale that week or what is at a good price. If I buy food to make two different types of freezer meal batches I'll usually spend an hour on Sunday making one batch (a batch to me is 3-4 meals) and I'll spend another hour or so during the week making the second meal. So your inventory grows very fast doing that. I would also recommend a membership to a large supply store (like BJs or Costco), this helps keep my pantry well stocked which makes assembling the meals quick and low cost each week. Plus its easier buying big trays of meat than 4 little trays. I usually go about once every 3 months because when I DO go it gets very pricey.

So that's my introduction to freezer meals. They've been great for my family- I have a long commute so when I get home I only have an hour or so before dinner and I'd rather spend that time playing with Charlie, cleaning, or doing other errands than cooking dinner. Plus less dishes :) Not to mention it saves a lot of money! Do you have any good freezer recipes to share?

3 comments:

If you ever get the chance buy a food saver. I just recently got one a couple months ago and I love it. Any time I cook a turkey, ham, or beef and have leftovers I can use the food saver and freeze them for another day to use for soups/stews. The food saver would be perfect for you to freeze those meals your not going to have for awhile. Looks like you got everything in order. Thanks for the post I enjoyed reading it.

Hi my name is Cassandra. I live in CT with my 6 year old son, Charlie, who has Cystic Fibrosis. I work in the biotech industry during the day but at home I love to cook, bake, and create scrapbooking layouts, cards, wreaths, and other crafty things.